Among the various types of capacitors are those having a body formed by a winding of layers of insulative material and two sheets of foil. A wound capacitor, as do other types of capacitors, provides a single functional capacitive element of a predetermined value when incorporated into an electrical circuit. The two conductive sheets form the conductive electrode plates which are spaced by one or more layers of insulation, forming the dielectric. One type of prior art capacitor winding is shown in FIG. 1 where the foils 15 are narrower than the insulation layers 16 and the lateral sides of the foils are inset with respect to the ends of the windings. This type of construction is known as "inductive" because tab insert connectors are used which contact their respective foils at typically only one location in only one turn of the wound foil, usually about the middle of the length of the foil. Because of the single location of contact, inductance is greatly increased.
Another type of prior art wound capacitor is shown in FIG. 2 wherein the opposite lateral side of each foil 17 is extended to, and perhaps past, the corresponding edge of the insulation 18. As one foil extends to one end of the capacitor body but short of the other, while the remaining foil extends to the other end of the capacitor body but short of the first, the ends of the winding can be metallized to make contact with a corresponding foil. This staggering of the foils reduces inductance as the metallized end makes essentially continuous contact with the edge of the foil throughout its entire length.
The first types of wound capacitors employed paper for insulation. More recently, plastic film has been used for the dielectric material and metallized film has been used to provide both the dielectric and the electrode. All of these prior art wound capacitors, without regard to whether they are of the inductive type or of the non-inductive type capacitor construction, still only provide a single capacitive function. If the application requires multiple capacitive functions, multiple discrete capacitors have to be employed. These multiple discrete capacitors represent added expense and can take up much valuable space on a printed circuit board.